In Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Sizwe Banzi, a Black worker whose passbook is not in order, walks into the photograph studio of Styles, another Black. Without a proper passbook, Sizwe Banzi cannot work and therefore cannot support his wife and four children. Returning drunkenly from a bar one night, Sizwe Banzi and his friend, Buntu, stumble across the body of a dead man whose passbook is in order. Photographer Styles attaches Sizwe Banzi’s photo to the dead man’s passbook. So Sizwe Banzi “dies” by taking on the dead man’s identity and so, too, lives again so he can support himself and his family.
